Five questions from customers about web pages
Here is my little QA posting about what customers have asked me and what kind of answers I have given. Feel free to write your opinions to comments as your comments are always welcome here.
1. I want my page to be #1 in Google!
Easiest way to achieve it is to publish banners in Google that are shown before search results. If you want to be #1 position in search result then start from acknowledging yourself that SEO is process and not a one time activity. There are many good resources available in web, also you can find many good books about SEO. All your activities may or may not to guarantee better results but #1 is very hard thing to achieve. Indexing algorithms are not public, so nobody can sell you a service like “Get number one position in Google”.
2. How Flash affects my homepage visibility?
Some spiders can read Flash but most of them can’t. Keep your Flash page as alternative page to the one you made in HTML. All spiders are able to read HTML. Of course, there are pages where Flash is must-be. Don’t be afraid to create Flash sites when it is needed. You can always use other web marketing tricks to make those pages popular.
3. Why documents on my web page have better positions than pages that link to them?
I have seen this happening couple of times. One of my customer has product pages with some information about those products. The pages had short product description and couple of technical characteristics. And… links to full product specifications. Well, spiders found more keywords from specifications than from pages linking to them. As those product pages ranked extremely poorly then indexed documents got better positions in search results. You can avoid that effect by creating keyword rich pages for products. Also you have to follow basic SEO advices.
4. How dynamic menus may affect my page?
Spiders can read and analyze JavaScript but they don’t run it. So, if you have fully dynamic JavaScript menus that are created on the fly then spiders doesn’t see those menus. If you are using divs that are located on the page then spiders see that you have links on page. If you have to use fully dynamic menus then at least put link to your sitemap on all the pages you have. Otherwise spiders cannot see navigation options and your pages may rank not so well.
5. Is it possible to make cool things without Flash?
Yes, it is. If your cool things contain important keywords then some things you can do with JavaScript and dynamic HTML. It is also easier for visitors computer if it doesn’t have to load some content to plug-ins that have their own runtime engines.